General Forum Rules

Do not spam or self-promote in the forums

• This forum defines spam as unsolicited advertisement for goods, services and/or other web sites or posts with little, no or completely unrelated content.
• Do not spam the forums with links to your site or product, or try to self-promote your website, business or forums etc. We would ask you to honour the integrity of this site and forum with the understanding that it is run by MVP Sports. We do not condone promotion of competitors products on this site unless prior agreement is granted by the site administrator. Please check first, although you may well know what the answer will be!
• Your account will be banned permanently and your posts will be deleted.
• Spamming also includes sending private messages to a large number of different users.

Do not post "Free " threads

• Posting pyramid scams (such as free iPods, LCDs etc.) is forbidden. All such posts/signatures will be edited or deleted. Any new users posting scams will be banned permanently; contributing users will either be warned or temporarily banned.

Do not cross post questions

• Please refrain from posting the same question in several forums. There is normally one forum which is most suitable in which to post your question. 
• If you're not sure where to post, ask a moderator first.

Do not post copyright-infringing material

• Do not upload, attach, or otherwise post any copyrighted material which you are not free to redistribute (subject to the licensing terms of the specific item). If you have a question about having permission to post or attach a specific item, please ask a moderator.
• We do not condone nor accept posts pertaining to illegal activities such as hacking, cracking, warez, or spam.
• Any posts or threads found in violation of this rule will be edited or deleted, and the poster warned or possibly banned; at the moderation team's discretion.

Do not post "offensive" posts, links or images

• Do not post anything which is offensive, hateful, racist, sexist, discriminatory, obscene, vulgar or in violation of local or international laws.

Do not PM users asking for help

• Do not send private messages to any users asking for help. If you need help, make a new thread in the appropriate forum.
• Remain respectful of other users, moderators and administrators at all times
• All posts should be professional and courteous. You have every right to disagree with your fellow community members and explain your perspective.
• However, you are not free to attack, degrade, insult, or otherwise belittle them or the quality of this community. It does not matter what title or power you hold in these forums, you are expected to obey this rule. Doing otherwise will get your account banned temporarily, or permanently if the situation becomes severe enough (this will be left to the discretion of the moderation team). Rudeness will not be tolerated in this community forum.
• For example, phrases such as "shut up, idiot," are indicative of problematic posts and should be reported. Suggested alternatives include "I disagree with what you said for the following reasons..." Please remember to stay mature and thoughtful at all times.

General Forum Questions

Am I allowed more than one account at Club MVP?

• No, there is no reason why you should have more than one account at Club MVP. If you are banned from the forum, please do not create a new account. By creating a new account, you are making the banning/warning system pointless. Your new accounts will be permanently banned.
• If you continue to create new accounts after you have been banned, your IP address may well be blocked from the forums. If you then start to register using differnet IP addresses, we reserve the right to take legal action against you. Using proxy servers will not get you anywhere.

What happens if I break a rule?

• If you break a rule, then you will either be warned or banned. A ban of your user account may either be temporary or permanent. If you are given an official warning, using the built-in warning system, a further warning within the next 30 days will result in a temporary ban which will last 7 days. If you are not given an official warning, a user note may be added to your account and the incident may be logged for future reference.
• While a ban will normally involve only a ban of your user account, in extreme circumstances, it is possible to block your IP address from the forums.
• The administrators and moderators also have the right to edit, delete, move or close and thread or post as they see necessary, without prior warning.

What happens if I see a thread/post which has broken a rule?

• Please report the thread/post to the moderators using the red triangle "Report Bad Post" link, which appears in the top right-hand corner of every post. This report will be sent to all moderators of that particular forum, who will respond to the incident as quickly as possible.

Where can I find out who is in charge?

• The Forum Leaders page displays all the moderators and administrators of the forum.
• When in doubt, ask a moderator about the topic of your thread or post. They will be able to tell you if it violates the rules or not. If your thread or post is removed and you do not recieve an email or PM about it, then ask a moderator why it was removed. Do not re-post your thread or start another one complaining about your thread being removed.

Specific Forum Rules

The rules and guidelines found in this document cover all forum categories within this site. In addition, some of the forums may have additional rules and guidelines that apply specifically. Before posting in any forum, check for any sticky posts containing additional rules.

General Posting Guidelines

I figured this was necessary because a lot of people come in and post threads without thinking, and without realizing that there is no possible way they could get help because of the way they posted the question. Here are some general guidelines.

Use Search First!

• There is a pretty good chance that unless you have some really odd or unique problem that it has been addressed on this forum before (or even hundreds of times before for some issues).
• Use the forum's search feature first to see if there are already some good threads on the subject. It's easy to search - just click the "Search" button at the top right of the forum (not the one at the top of the page.. that one is for the entire mvpsports.ca site.

Be descriptive!

I cannot stress this enough. We cannot possibly help you if you simply post a thread, copy and paste your whole script and say "it has errors what's wrong with it?".

Keep this in mind:

• Explain to us what exactly the problem is. Be as specific as you can!
• Remember that you know a lot more about your problem than we do. Don't assume we know just what it does.

Don't use stupid topic names

• Post a descriptive topic name!
• Give a short summary of your problem in the subject.
• Don't use attention getting subjects. They don't get attention. They repel attention and annoy people.

Here's a great list of topic subjects you should not post as they will elicit very few respsonses:

• Help me 
• Hello 
• You must know the answer 
• Please help this female newbie
• Something wrong 
• Come on coaching gurus 
• This one for you 
• Just wondering 
• This is too complicated for me 
• possible? 
• Very urgent 
• I have a question
• Stupid question
• Newbie needs help
• pulling my hair out
• this is driving me nuts

Generally anything similar to those is unacceptable. Just post your problem.

Here is a good example of a way to post a question in the subject about a delivery problem...

• "My bowl always goes narrow"

or even better:

• "Whenever I play a backhand shot my bowls are always running inside the line"

These are bad examples:

• "I can't figure this out!"
• "Stupid question..."
• "Help me! Urgent!"

Finally... here's the thing about asking for help!

• If you're not going to take the advice, don't ask for help.
• Often times, people post questions about with the wrong mindset from the very beginning. Soon they are receiving replies making no effort to even acknowledge the people helping them! It becomes one sided, and the poster isn't aware that many of the people helping them hope to learn something as well! Letting people know of your progress and how their suggestions apply (or do not apply) will not only help you figure out your problem quicker, but you'll be returning the favor to those of us who learn more by helping.
• In even worse scenarios, sometimes the poster will argue back even when they don't know what they're talking about. Hey - if you know it all, don't ask for help.
• When people give you free advice that may solve your problem, by all means, try it out! And if it's not what you need, at least thank them. 
• And if people post advice that is over your head, ask them for an explanation. Too many times I see great solutions posted, then the original poster doesn't understand it and goes on a rant about how useless the advice was, or finds some other advice they think will solve their problem but really has nothing to do with their problem! The solution you are given may not always be something you are totally familiar with, so just ask for a better explanation!
• Remember when people help you, they are doing you a favour.
• Regardless of how big your ego is, it is not someone else's privilege to be your full time coach! It is not their privilege to have them help you. It is yours. Remember that when people help you they are doing you a favor. You are not doing them a favor by letting them see your incredible progress. Be patient, help people out by posting good descriptions of what you need help with, and not snapping at people with garbage such as "if you aren't going to help don't waste my time replying".
• Please always remember the advice you get here is for the most part voluntary and free. If you want to pay for more than you are getting here maybe its time to visit the Delivery Doctor!

Editing and Deleting Your Posts

• Due to security issues and the need to ensure the quality of our knowledgebase, we have had to impose a 30 day limit on the ability for regular users to EDIT their posts. What this means, is that users have the ability to edit thier own posts for only a given time after creating it.
• If for some reason, if a user needs a post changed that is old, a moderator can assist them to make the necessary changes.
• This also means, as a rule, that we do not remove or delete content from our forums. So, before you post, consider this rule.

Club MVP Forum Help

Since you are reading this page then it is safe to say to that you already know basic website navigation such as typing web addresses, clicking through links and maybe even watching or listening to multimedia. That's great! What we'll do here is try to familiarise you with how to use our forum and its many options. NB... I have since changed the Forum engine here at MVP Sports so some of the content below may not specifically apply. In general, however, the principals are the same. I will be editing this content as soon as time allows!

When you get done reading this you will be able to:

• reply to existing posts as well as make new posts
• format your text
• make links
• add images and videos and much more.

We're not going to teach you how to use every little button, gizmo or forum feature but rather provide you sufficient working knowledge to feel comfortable enough to get involved here in the forum. After that, you can do a sleuthing around to learn what the rest of the goodies do.

Set up your profile

When you find a community and forum that you like and plan on staying with for a while (hopefully that's us here at Club MVP!) it is a good idea to set up and complete your profile. You access your profile by clicking 'My Profile' located at the top of the forum. This area is not much different than any other form you have filled out online or in real life except that much of the information in here is optional.

Personal Info

• Summary - All your settings from other tabs summarized.
• Edit Your Details - Edit your login name, email address and password.
• My Avatar - Select an avatar from those available or upload your own image. If you upload your own image, you can upload an image up to 250 x 250 pixels and 50 kilobytes. The forum will automatically scale the image for use in various locations.

Forum Settings

• Look and Layout - Tweak a few forum appearance settings.
• My Profile Info - Fill in personal information that you don't mind sharing publicly. This is also where you fill out your forum signature.
• My Posts - List of your posts ordered by most recent. Handy for finding a post that you don't recall which board you posted it in.
• My Subscribes - List of topics that you have subscribed to send you an email notification for all new responses.
• My Favorites - List of topics that you have ticked as a favourite of yours so they are more easily identifiable in the forum list.
• Remember to press the 'Save' button any time you make changes in your profile.

Reply to an existing post

So, you have been lurking around the Club MVP forum for a while reading every post and getting to know everyone. You have just read someone's post and you have finally decided you are going to reply and contribute some information of your own. Great! This is done by pressing one of the 'reply' buttons.

• Quick Reply - this brings up a small text area (without reloading the webpage) where you can quickly type a short reply. Press 'Submit' when you are done typing your response. If you have a change of heart you can press cancel and nothing gets posted regardless if you typed anything or not.

• Reply - This is the standard method in which you should reply when you want to reply primarily to the most recent post. The reason for this is because the subject line of your reply will autofill with the subject of the post from which you are replying. In case you were wondering, yes, you can change the subject. OK, now you are looking at what is called a text editor. Think of it as a slimmed down version of a word processor (such as Microsoft Word) in which you can format your text, add links, images, smilies, etc. More on how to format your post later. For now, type your response and press the 'Preview' button at the bottom of the page if you wish to view your post prior to submitting it. When you are done editing and are satisfied your post is ready to contribute to the forum then press the 'Submit' button.

• Quote - If you wish to quote someone's post whether in whole or in part you simple press the 'Quote' button located beside the 'Reply' button underneath each post. The is very useful if you wish to make light of or expand upon a prior post. Once you press the Quote button you are brought into the same editing environment that you use to edit or create any other post. At this point, you type your response directly to that quote. When you are done replying, press the 'Submit' button.

• Reply Topic - This button functions the same as the 'Reply' button with the exception that your subject line will autofill with the subject of the original post (OP). This may come in handy if you replying to a long post whose subjects may have changed over time but you want to reply to the OP. When you are done replying, press the 'Submit' button.

Create a new post of your own

Now that you have responded to a few other posts, and feel like an accepted member of the Club MVP community, you want to tell us a little bit about yourself. To do this, you should start your very own topic so we can properly respond and greet you. Navigate to our General board and click on it so that you can see the list of all of the existing posts. At the top of the list is a button labelled 'New Thread'. Click that button to start your very own topic. You are placed at the same text editor that you used earlier when replying to posts. Simply type your message telling us all about yourself and press 'Submit'. Now you have your own post topic in the list.

The Karma System

The karma system is one of those neat little things that contributes to the community aspect of Club MVP by empowering you to give feedback to those who deserve it. It is a tool you can use to show appreciation or disapproval for anything that another member has done.

Maybe you posted for help on how to do something and got such a swift and helpful response from another member that you want to show appreciation in more than just words. You can applaud them by giving them Karma. Perhaps another member responded to that same post negatively offering no help and unnecessarily making you look foolish when you genuinely needed help. You can smite them by take away Karma. However, should you smite someone, you should follow that up with a message to an admin or moderator and let them know just in case there is a larger issue.

Please use the karma system responsibly. Don't abuse it by artificially inflating someone's karma or waging a personal war against someone by reducing their karma unnecessarily. If abuse is detected the karma system will be shut off as it is not a necessity.

The karma controls are located in the top, right of each post we make in the forum. The '+' sign adds karma and the '-' takes it away. You cannot adjust your own karma.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to create your own posts, edit them, set notifications, etc, you are ready to explore the rest of the Club MVP forum. Don't be afraid. Go click things and see what they do. If something 'breaks' or you don't understand how to use something make a post in the forum and ask for help.

but wait... there's more!

Format your post

Remember we said earlier that the text editor is very similar to a word processor? Well, as in any word processor you can format and arrange your text for emphasis here in the forum. The following sections are intended mainly for those with some html coding background but newbies to coding may be able to use these tips as well.

The first, basic thing you should know is that the forum uses what's called BBcode or Bulletin Board Code. BBcode uses 'tags' to 'mark up' your text. Each 'tag' has an opening and closing 'tag' denoted within brackets. An opening tag will look like [ ] and a closing tag looks like [/ ]. Notice the slash in the closing bracket is the only thing that is different. If you forget the slash, the forum will interpret your closing bracket as an opening bracket.

The easiest way to 'mark up' your text is usually to type it out first, then select it, and press the appropriate button at the top of the editor. For example, if you wanted to make 'some text' bold you would type it out 'some text', then select 'some text' with your mouse, and then press the 'B' icon in the toolbar located just above the Message area (where you are composing your message). You will now see: [b]some text[/b]. When you preview or submit your message it will be displayed as 'some text'. Alternatively, if you know them, you can type the tags manually right along with the rest of your text or you can use the buttons at the top of the editor to insert the tags the fill in your text.

The BBcode Wiki covers the basic mark up tags so let's move on to what the Wiki doesn't cover.

Lists

There are two types of lists: ordered and unordered. An ordered list is a numerical list like you might use to list the finishing order of a race. An unordered list is a list you might use to list groceries. There are two different tags needed to create a list.

First, you use a tag that creates the kind of list you want.

[ul] [/ul] = unordered list [ol] [/ol] = ordered list

Second, you use a list tag for each item in the list

[li] [/li] = each list item.

So, the code for an ordered list would look like this:

[ol] [li] 1st place[/li] [li] 2nd place[/li] [li] 3rd place[/li] [/ol]

Videos

Embedding a video in your post is a more recent addition to the forum and makes use of many video sharing websites on the web. This gives us the ability to show the video in our forum without having to host it ourselves or making you follow a link over some other website to see the video. Once you have a video that you want to post you need to find the unique identifier in the URL to that video.

It's difficult to provide detailed instructions or examples here, so we'll only cover the basics. Understand that each video sharing website uses a unique identifier for each video. For example, this video from YouTube whose URL ishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqJE5TH5jhc. You need to know the video's unique identifier (which differs depending on what site you visit); in our example, the unique identifier is bqJE5TH5jhc. Once you know what that unique identifier is you can embed that video in our forum by selecting the video hosting website from the 'video' drop down list at the top of the WYSIWIG editor pr typing the following:

[video type=] [/video]

If you were embedding a video from YouTube, for example, the bbcode would end up looking like this:

[video type=youtube] insert_unique_identifier_here [/video]

for example

[video type=youtube] bqJE5TH5jhc [/video]

It's a good idea to preview your post to make sure the video is visible before submitting your completed post.

Edit your own post

There will be times when you make a post and you don't catch a misspelled word, fix a broken link or something that will require you to edit you post. It happens to us all so the edit button is easily accessible. When you are looking at one of your own posts that you need to edit you will find the 'Edit' button at the bottom of your post. Simply press the edit button and you use the same editor you used to create your post populated with the actual post. Edit your post as you see fit and, when you are satisfied, press the 'Submit' button at the bottom of the page. All done! You may not be able to edit your own post after a certain time limit however. This is common in most if not all forums.

Visibility and notification of your favorite posts

Now that you have settled into Club MVP and everyone has met you, you want to be able to keep up with your favorite posts without checking in every five minutes to see if something new has posted. There a couple of ways that you can do that.

Subscribe

At the top and the bottom of every thread you will find the 'Subscribe' button. Pressing this button subscribes you to that topic so that any responses to that topic will generate an email notification to your email address stating that a new post has been made along with a link directly to said post for your convenience. You will notice the button now reads 'Unsubscribe' indicating that you are subscribed and pressing the button again will remove your subscription to that thread. Remember that you can also manage your subscriptions in your profile.

Favourite

Another way of gaining visibility of threads that wish to keep an eye on is set them as your 'Favorite'. This will place an obvious indicator, such as a star, beside the topic name of the thread so that it will stand out in the forum list of topics. You will notice the button now reads 'Unfavorite' indicating that the post is already one of your favourites and pressing the button again will remove it from your favourites. This is a great way to get visibility on multiple topics that you wish to watch without getting spammed by email subscriptions. Remember that you can also manage your favourites in your profile.